The other day, I watched this video of this French guy telling tourists what they should and shouldn't do when they're in his country — and especially in Paris. In other words, he gave them a list of dos and don'ts. At the end of his video, he asked the viewers to comment below with things that people shouldn't do when visiting their respective countries. This made me think of an experience I once had with some French girls back in 1999.

I was living in New Orleans at the time, right down the street from a youth hostel. A youth hostel is basically a hotel for young travelers, except that instead of staying in individual rooms, everybody normally stays in one big room with bunk beds. And as far as I know, they’re not coed. At any rate, one evening, I was jonesing for pasta, so I decided to go to a local Italian restaurant for dinner. When I walked out of my apartment, I saw these three girls standing in front of the youth hostel, looking around like they were lost. Now I was used to seeing kids go in and out of the hostel all the time, so I did my best to look approachable in case they wanted to ask me for help, and sure enough, they came up to me, polite as you please, and asked me if there was anywhere nearby that they could go eat something nice and not too expensive. They were French. I gave them a few options and told them that I was on my way to my favorite Italian restaurant, and that if they were in the mood for pasta, they could by all means join me. Two of the girls loved the idea, but the third girl, Sophie, was visibly hesitant and started conferring with her girlfriends in French. Red flag number one. I knew enough French to glean that she was dead broke and wanted to find a McDonald's. Being the gentleman I am, I chivalrously offered to pay for her meal, which she accepted with no hesitation. So off we went to the restaurant, which was about a 15-minute walk as the crow flies.

As we walked through my neighborhood, which was a very nice one, by the way, I noticed that Sophie would get all worked up whenever she spotted a black man on the street. Now New Orleans has a rich black culture and is about 60% black. But every time this girl saw a black man, she’d be like “Oh my God! What are we doing here? We’re going to get raped! This is the ghetto!” I couldn’t believe my ears. I knew a lot of the men she was referring to; some of them were friends of mine, so it irked me to no end that she’d assume that they were out to rape her. Red flag number two! To say nothing of the fact that of all three girls, she was the least likely to attract any man’s attention… a long horse face, tiny little granny spectacles, and her breath! Every time she turned to talk to me — even outside in the open air — that putrid breath would hit me like a wet towel. It was all I could do to keep from throwing up right there on the street. But I digress…

So we made it to the restaurant… without getting raped by anyone, and almost instantly, red flag number three came up. Sophie immediately started in on the city, Americans, and the “slop” we call food, saying that Americans don’t know how to eat — the same slop, mind you, that I paid for because she was too broke to feed herself anything but McDonald’s. But slop or no slop, Her Majesty ate everything but the waiter. So, to answer that YouTuber’s question, when you’re in the US… or any country for that matter, Rule Number One is: Don’t bite the hand that feeds you!”

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